Developers Encourage Piracy Over Using Key Reseller G2A

Video game key reseller G2A has come under fire (yet again) from a number of developers, over a recent ad push that has seen G2A links appear on Google above various publishers’ own links.

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Publisher Mike Rose called the reseller out on Twitter, admonishing them for the practice. He explained that he and other publishers “make zero money on our games if people buy them through ads”, and said if you were considering buying through G2A, he’d rather you just pirate his games instead, for all the difference it would make to him.

Rose wrote:

G2A has taken out sponsored ads on Google, which mean that when you search for our games, you get G2A popping up above our own links — and we make zero money on our games if people buy through the ads. Please, if you’re going to buy a game from G2A, just pirate it instead! Genuinely! Devs don’t see a penny either way, so we’d much rather G2A didn’t see money either.

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Action Henk developer Squid Games and Vlambeer’s Rami Ismail soon chimed in to support Rose, with Ismail adding that in addition to not actually getting any money from G2A, publishers lose further time and money on having to offer customer support for those who end up with fake or deactivated keys via resellers.

He explained:

If you can’t afford or don’t want to buy our games full-price, please pirate them rather than buying them from a key reseller. These sites cost us so much potential dev time in customer service, investigating fake key requests, figuring out credit card chargebacks, and more.

Back in 2017, Gearbox clashed with G2A over what the publisher described as a lack of commitment “to protecting customers and developers requested by Gearbox Publishing.” Also in 2017, TinyBuild chief Alex Nichiporchik called G2A out over its business practices at a GDC panel called “Fraud and Your Game Economy.” Ouch.

It seems that G2A has been making more of a conscious effort to clean up its image over the last year, but it seems that the vast majority of developers and publishers who’ve had run-ins with them don’t believe anything has changed for the better.

Ewan Moore

Ewan Moore is a journalist at UNILAD Gaming who still quite hasn't gotten out of his mid 00's emo phase. After graduating from the University of Portsmouth in 2015 with a BA in Journalism &amp; Media Studies (thanks for asking), he went on to do some freelance words for various places, including Kotaku, Den of Geek, and TheSixthAxis, before landing a full time gig at UNILAD in 2016.